A Look Back at the Iraq War

President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. will pull out all of its troops from Iraq by the end of December, drawing the nearly nine-year war to a conclusion. See some of the major events in the course of the war. (See complete coverage.)

Updated Oct. 22, 2011 11:06 a.m. ET

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The U.S. began its invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. At left, Marines entered the southern city of Nasiriyah on March 23.
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A U.S. Army tank rolled deeper into Iraqi territory on March 23, 2003, south of the city of An Najaf.
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A statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled by an American armored vehicle in Baghdad's al-Firdos Square on April 9, 2003.
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A U.S. Marine arrested an Iraqi man after a scuffle in Tikrit on April 14, 2003. The Marines captured the city after meeting with little resistance from Saddam Hussein's loyalists.
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Less than three months after the invasion began, President George W. Bush, at left on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, declared "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." As the summer continued, attacks by Iraqi insurgents grew and the U.S.-led coalition's casualties mounted.
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On Dec. 13, 2003, Saddam Hussein was found in a hideaway accessed by a hole in the ground as American troops searched a compound in the town of Adwar, about 10 miles from Mr. Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. At left, the ousted Iraqi leader was dragged from his hiding spot.
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In April 2004, photographs emerged of U.S. troops abusing prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, triggering an international outcry. At left, a relative of an Iraqi prisoner held at Abu Ghraib put his hand to his face on May 8 as another person displayed a newspaper with pictures of the abuse.
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An Iraqi girl looked out from her home as an Iraqi National guard carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher took his position near the Imam Ali Shrine in the besieged city of Najaf on Aug. 25, 2004. The renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia used the holy site as a stronghold and refuge throughout the fighting between the militia and U.S.-Iraqi forces, which began Aug. 5.
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In November 2004, the coalition undertook a major offensive against insurgents in Fallujah. At left, family photographs were stuck to the door of an armored vehicle as a U.S. Marine aimed his rifle during operations in Fallujah on Nov. 13.
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A Marine dropped a grenade down a stairwell to clear a lower floor as the company cleared and searched houses, one by one, for insurgents on Nov. 25, 2004, in Fallujah.
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Iraqis in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad showed their ink-stained fingers after voting on Oct. 15, 2005, when voters approved a new Iraqi constitution. Two months later, Iraq held its first parliamentary election under the new constitution.
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An explosion destroyed the 'golden dome' of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, at left, on Feb. 22, 2006. The attack led to retaliatory attacks against Sunni Muslim mosques and raised Iraq's sectarian tensions to new heights. The next day, at least 136 Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence.
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Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, at left in an undated photo, was killed in a U.S. airstrike on June 7, 2006. The airstrike against him near the small town of Hibhib marked the successful culmination of more than two years of sustained pursuit by U.S. and Iraqi forces.
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Saddam Hussein was executed in December 2006, 56 days after a court convicted and sentenced him to death for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims after an assassination attempt against him in 1982. At left, an Iranian youth watched footage of the execution on TV in Tehran on Dec. 31, 2006.
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A U.S. soldier guarded the scene where a car bomb exploded at a market in the New Baghdad neighborhood in Baghdad, killing 55 people on Feb. 18, 2007. A month earlier, President Bush had unveiled his retooled war strategy, announcing that 21,500 more Americans would be sent to Iraq.
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Relatives looked at a large crater on Sept. 14, 2007, where Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, a leading figure in the Sunni tribal revolt against al Qaeda and head of the Anbar Awakening Council, was killed a day earlier by a roadside bomb near his home.
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The U.S. forces buildup peaked in October 2007 with 170,000 troops. At left, an Iraqi woman mourned over the body of her son -- who was killed in an overnight mortar attack on the village of Hebeb -- outside a Baquba hospital morgue on Nov. 30, 2007.
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Neighbors looked at the rubble of a house destroyed in an explosion in Basra on April 7, 2008. Fighting broke out in March after the government launched a crackdown on militia violence in the southern city.
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The U.S. handed over control of Anbar province to Iraqi troops in September 2008. At left, U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. John Kelly (left) and Anbar province Governor Maamoun Sami Rashid al-Alwani (right) signed papers during a handover ceremony in Ramadi, the provincial capital, on Sept. 1.
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A U.S. soldier shook hands with an Iraqi child on March 5, 2009, in Baghdad. A group of U.S. soldiers attended the reopening of the al-Fadael elementary school, which was repaired after it suffered damage during the war.
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Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as 'Chemical' Ali, was executed in January 2010 after being convicted for the most infamous of his crimes, ordering the attacks against the Kurdish town of Halabja that killed more than 5,000 people in clouds of poisonous gas. At left, mourners prayed at his grave in the village of Awja.
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U.S. Army soldiers transported the remains of Army Specialist Jamal M. Rhett at Dover Air Force Base on Aug. 17, 2010, in Dover, Del. Mr. Rhett, of Palmyra, N.J., died Aug. 15 in Iraq, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his vehicle with grenades.
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The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division crossed the Iraq desert a few miles from the Kuwait border at sunrise on Aug. 17, 2010. The 1,800 soldiers in 360 vehicles traveled 369 miles to leave Iraq.
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The U.S. combat mission in Iraq formally ended on Aug. 31, 2010. U.S. soldiers listened as Vice President Joe Biden spoke during the change of command ceremony in Baghdad between General Ray Odierno and Lieutenant General Lloyd Austin, on Sept. 1, 2010.
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In December 2010, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ruled out the presence of any U.S. troops in Iraq after the end of 2011, saying his new government and the country's security forces were capable of confronting any remaining threats to Iraq's security, sovereignty and unity.
Max Becherer for The Wall Street Journal…

Obama administration officials had considered extending the U.S. troop presence beyond the end of the year, leaving a force of between 3,000 and 5,000 for contingencies. Here, soldiers listened to Defense Secretary Robert Gates at Camp Marez in Mosul, Iraq, on April 8, 2011.
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Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr spoke at Friday prayers in Kufa, Iraq, on May 13, 2011. Al-Sadr said Aug. 7 that U.S. forces who stay past the Dec. 31 withdrawal deadline would be fair game to attack.
Alaa al-Marjani/Associated Press…

U.S. Army Pfc. David Hedge, front, and fellow soldiers from 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment arrived by Blackhawk helicopter for an operation to disrupt weapons smuggling in Istaqlal, north of Baghdad, on Aug. 8, 2011.
Maya Alleruzzo/Associated Press…

In September 2011, Iraq finalized a deal to buy advanced U.S. fighter jets, the first step toward building a modern postwar air force. Here, five U.S. Air Force F-16 jets flew in formation over the U.S. en route to an exercise.
Handout/Staff Sgt. Greg L. Davis/USAF/Reuters…

'As promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year,' President Obama said on Oct 21. 'After nearly nine years, America's war in Iraq will be over.' An U.S. Army soldier walked past a sign at the Camp Victory Base complex in Baghdad on Oct. 15.
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